1. Field of the Invention.
The present invention relates to systems and methods for making patent documents or portions thereof, such as abstracts, readily available through a computer interface. More specifically, the invention relates to ways of providing meaningful insights by processing a set of existing patents to determine other relevant information.
2. Present State of the Art.
Patent data, including full text and/or images of patents, portions of patents (e.g., patent abstracts, etc.), is available in computer databases and is well known in the art Currently, a number of companies provide patent information over the Internet, including the United States Patent and Trademark Office, The Intellectual Property Network, and others. While much of the current information is centered around patents issued by the United States, increasingly there is more information from all granting authorities worldwide.
These databases of patent information typically allow searching of the database to find patents of interest. Some searching can be done on the entire text of a patent while other searching is limited to certain portions of patent such as the claims or abstracts. Such searching allows patents of interest to be found by researchers, attorneys, patent examiners, etc. Additionally, in order to make finding relevant patents more convenient, some patent databases provide the ability to follow links to patents that cite a given patent or were cited by the examiner in the prosecution of a given patent.
In many instances, services are also available in association with the actual patent data. For example, it is common to be able to search for patents in a database and then “order” any particular patents of interest to be delivered to you by mail, fax, etc.
Patent databases are used by professional patent searchers doing prior art searches or validity searches for clients, patent examiners during the course of patent application examination, business people to understand areas of technology, and others. Companies who own patents can also conveniently track competitors' patent issuance activity using such patent databases.
Elements of textual analysis tools have been applied to patent databases in order to extract higher-level information or put more meaning into existing data. See, for example, Text Mining Applied to Patent Analysis by Hehenberger, et. al., IBM Corp. White Paper, 1998 There is a great need for such intelligent information and ever less expensive computer processing provides ample opportunity to provide such information.
What is needed are ways of calculating relevant intelligent information over what is currently offered by patent database providers and patent analysis products. This will allow new and important insights to be made by the users of such patent databases.
One needed insight is the ability to determine potential licensees for a particular patent portfolio. Currently, a company having a patent portfolio and desiring to find other companies that might want to license the portfolio rely upon general knowledge of the particular industry, searching for like competitors, etc. It would be beneficial to gain insight from analyzing patent data in order to find not so obvious companies that may be interested in a particular patent portfolio.